Dual-core Tegra K1 spotted in benchmark

An interesting Tegra K1-based prototype has popped up in Antutu. Unlike the K1 demoed by Nvidia at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the chip is a dual-core affair and it is a 64-bit part.

The Tegra K1 is supposed to show up in two flavours and the first one to appear will feature four Cortex A15 CPU cores. The 64-bit version, based on Nvidia's custom Denver ARMv8 CPU core, is expected to show up later this year. The Antutu listing leaves us with more questions than answers. The unnamed device runs Android 4.4.2, it has a 1920x1080 screen (no word on size), 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 2MP front facing camera and a 13MP rear camera. The megapixel count on the latter points to a smartphone, although the Tegra K1 should feel more at home in a tablet.

The clock ranges from 510MHz to a whopping 3.0GHz, which sounds rather high. The device scores 43617 in Antutu, slightly less than the A15-based version which scored 43851. However, this is relatively good news, as two 64-bit cores can hold their own against four A15 cores. Both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of the Tegra K1 end up 20 to 25 percent faster than the old Tegra 4 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800. So could this be an all new Cortex A57 version? Probably not, as the A57 would not outperform the A15 by a factor of two to one. There is no word on the GPU either - so we can't say for sure that it has the same 192-core Kepler GPU used in the 32-bit Tegra K1.

To say that benchmark leaks are not a very reliable source of information would be an understatement, but this one makes sense. Whether or not Nvidia can score enough design wins with the K1 remains to be seen, but it is safe to assume that its focus will be on tablets and form factors other than smartphones. It's a big, power hungry chip with no on-die LTE modem, so we don't expect to see many smartphone design wins.